Our most popular stories of the past year reflect concerns about how wine fits into 21st century lives, the role of brands and disruption in routes to market

Wine Intelligence turned 15 in 2018, and published 40 reports and 69 articles during the year, delivering our research straight to your inbox. Here we take a look at some of our most popular articles from the past 12 months:

Power brands: the back-story

To mark its 15th anniversary, Wine Intelligence published The Global Wine Brand Power Index 2018 report, which revealed the most powerful 15 wine brands in each of the 15 key wine markets analysed, as well as the most powerful 15 global wine brands – all based on consumer feedback. The Global Wine Brand Power Index was the result of on an algorithm developed by Wine Intelligence using data from our Vinitrac® surveys of roughly 16,000 respondents in 2017, which was representative of approximately 380 million wine drinkers in 15 key wine markets.

Although wine is struggling for attention, in a UK restaurant sector experiencing a ‘perfect storm’ of adverse trading conditions, consumers are still looking for wine in the on-trade, and willing to pay for it. Our research suggests these consumers are seeking demonstrably higher quality wine across all price points, including house wine and icon products, where quality in this context is often interpreted as ‘better than I could get in a supermarket / off-licence.’ On-trade practitioners can interpret this as a need for small or unique producers, and those with compelling or interesting stories to drive their wine sales.

While the long-awaited launch of Amazon into the Australian market in December 2017 failed to live up the hype, there were signs that the online juggernaut was making its presence felt. Rodney Sammut, Country Manager for Australia & New Zealand at Wine Intelligence, shared his findings from a networking event analysing what to expect from Amazon over the coming five years and his prediction of Amazon’s offering growth and the implications for the drinks industry in Australia.

The changing nature of the US wine drinking population is starting to have profound effects on its attitude and behaviour, showing a generational shift between older, more pragmatic and value seeking consumers, and younger, more aspirational and aesthetic-seekers. Beyond this generational difference, the Wine Intelligence US Portraits 2018 report, a segmentation model that divides the broad base of wine consumers into sub-groups based on attitudinal characteristics and recalled consumption frequency and spend, has found a more meaningful set of answers about consumer behaviour.

A fundamental fact of consumer goods is that ‘light users’ constitute the overwhelming majority of a brand’s buyers and are responsible for a large share of purchases. A typical consumer in the wine category knows surprisingly little about the range of offers in the category and has a small repertoire of the brands (and regions/varietals) they know and trust. Successful brands are the ones that can recruit these lighter customers (the majority) and become part of their repertoire. However, a stubborn minority can still force change, when the flexible majority are affected by the existence of a well-intentioned few just by assimilation (think about the rise in sales of vegetarian and vegan food options).